About Measuring the Parameters of the Subject-Methodical Competence of Biology Teachers in General Secondary Education Institutions

Abstract

Taking into account the professional standard of the teacher in the general secondary education institution, the concept of measuring indicators of the level of the subject component of the subject-methodical competence of the biology teacher in general secondary education institutions was developed. The corresponding concept applies the idea of a probabilistic sampling approach, which has already been tested by the authors, for evaluating parameters of the educators professional competence. This idea consists in selecting a hypothetical set of tasks corresponding to a teachers potential professional activity with the appropriate probability distribution of classes of tasks and construction of a representative sample of tasks. The indicator of the corresponding level of competence is considered as the probability to successfully solve any task from the general population, therefore it is theoretically calculated according to the formula of full probability, and the indicator estimate is the average weighted relative frequency of the removed classes of tasks. When forming the profile of the general population of tasks to assess subject competence, the authors relied on the classification of tasks types of the Ukrainian Centre for Education Quality Assessment, which reflects the structure of the school course in Biology and the Principles of Ecology. When approbating the results, 231 respondents were involved, the sample of teachers is representative, reflecting the age and qualification of biology teachers in the region. The research was carried out at professional development courses for teaching staff. Measurements showed a sufficiently high level of the indicator of the subject competence of biology teachers. According to the obtained estimates, the average value is 81.1%; the distribution of points is abnormal with a clearly expressed right asymmetry. The hypothesis about the independence of the results from teaching experience was not confirmed, the deviation of this hypothesis is at the 5% significance level. A more detailed analysis shows higher results for teachers with above average experience. The corresponding analysis provides grounds for differentiation in the learning process at teacher training courses depending on the pedagogical experience.